Two private rescue ships, the Sea-Eye 4 and the Aita Mari, have carried out rescues relatively close to each other not too far off the Libyan and Tunisian coasts. Sea-Eye 4 rescued 63 migrants on Tuesday and Aita Mari carried out a rescue on Wednesday of 17.
On Wednesday morning (June 15), the Spanish humanitarian rescue organization Maydayterraneo tweeted that they had rescued 17 people from a small boat in the Mediterranean. In fact, they tweeted that it had been a “complicated rescue” because the boat the 17 had been traveling on had at least 103 on board, and they were in the process of being returned to Libya by the Libyan coast guard when the Aita Mari came near them.
In the video posted to Twitter, you hear the crew telling them to wait, while throwing life jackets to those already in the water.
According to the Aita Mari crew, and videos they posted on twitter. Some of those on board threw themselves into the sea in order to avoid the Libyan coast guard patrol. “Two of them had to be monitored in the on board hospital, but their lives are not in danger,” concluded the tweet.
A video shows at least one of those people regurgitating sea water after swimming in the sea, their hands hanging limply off the narrow hospital stretcher on board the Aita Mari, being attended by several crew members.
On June 14, the Aita Mari crew tweeted about another rescue of 11 people. The majority of them were from Morocco and Bangladesh, as well as an unaccompanied minor from Somalia, said the Maydayterraneo crew.
The Aita Mari crew also posted pictures of those on board, huddling under blankets or undergoing COVID-19 tests. “Everyone is negative!” declared the crew happily. The ship, which sailed from Spain near the beginning of June has been off the coast of Tunisia and Libya for the last few days.
63 rescued by Sea-Eye 4
Not too far away from the Aita Mari, according to the current position on the website Marine Traffic Locator, is another humanitarian rescue ship, Sea-Eye 4, run by the German organization Sea-Eye. On Tuesday, the crew of Sea-Eye 4 rescued 63 people, after being alerted to their plight by the Mediterranean monitoring service Alarm Phone.
“Yesterday [Tuesday, June 14] afternoon, our crew rescued 63 people in peril at sea. They were on board a rubber dinghy and were fleeing the civil war in Libya. On board the boat were seven women, 25 men and 31 minors, including one baby,” Sea-Eye tweeted.
All the people are reportedly healthy, but some of the people needed rehydrating after suffering from sea-sickness and dehydration. Others had small injuries and pain and needed help from the on-board medics, according to Sea-Eye.
Destination Italy?
The Sea-Eye 4 set sail on its latest mission on June 5. For the first week of any mission, crews often train to make sure their rescue techniques are as fast and safe as possible, while sailing towards the search and rescue zones where most migrant boats get into trouble.
The Sea-Eye 4 began its service for Sea-Eye in 2021. According to the organization’s website, the boat can travel at a speed of up to 11 knots and is 53 meters long. It can accommodate up to 26 crew members and hundreds of rescued migrants.
Neither boat has yet announced that it is waiting to be assigned a safe harbor, in which to disembark those rescued. However, over the last few months, all private rescue ships have eventually disembarked rescued passengers in Italian ports.
According to the Italian government’s latest figures, updated on June 14, almost 22,000 (21,945) people have arrived in the country by boat across the Mediterranean since the beginning of the year.
